07 June 2013

Speaking about my research

I’m used to editing and omitting what I talk about when I
talk about my PhD. Women’s spirituality –
exploring women and religion, ecofeminism, and sacred arts/healing – isn’t
necessarily what I was raised to value.
Of course, my family is thrilled I’m working on my PhD, education being
the passage of ascension, and in many ways, they don’t care what I am
studying. At least, that’s how it seems.

But there’s a new thing that I’m speaking to in
my research now: racism. And, you know,
I just don’t know how to edit or omit very well in regards to this topic. Moreover, with women-centered communities that
I have felt free to share with before in regards to my program, mostly women
who do not identify as women of color, I now find myself a bit speechless. I am
hesitant to tell them that I want to talk about all women’s spirituality of my
ancestors, making sure to include the dark and indigenous. I somehow feel like I am calling them
racist. I feel unsafe, probably on the first
level within myself, and then I think I’m all alone in this awkward inability
to share. And, I realize, I am, actually, racist. I
carry that in me, and judging myself for that culpability, I can’t help but
judge those around me

Cristina Golondrina

Cristina holds a doctorate in Philosophy and Religion. She is a multiethnic women of color. Sometimes she is read as white, sometimes racially identified as “non-white/other.” She is a writer and artist exploring the themes she analyzed in her dissertation: themes of being mixed race, multilocational, and the affects of racism and colonialism in her body, in her writing, and in the literature she reads.